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Contents

Description

Commercial Towing Vessel Nostromo, an M-Class starfreighter property of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, is a tug, a towing vessel, hauling an enormous (some 1.5 miles in length) orerefinery and 20 milliontons of raw ore, weighing many times the mass of the Nostromo. The ship itself is still substantial, over 60,000 metric tons and almost 245 metres (800 feet) long, including three decks, four holds, stores, engines, and lots of pipes and ducts; its escape ship is called Narcissus. The ship is fitted with a self-destruct system and separates itself from the ore refinery platform via an umibical detachment system. The interior features a large 'space jockey' cockpit for all crew piloting functions, a medical bay, dining area, central computer room, engineering areas, a hypersleep chamber and a labyrinthine network of connecting corridors.

At the beginning of the first film, the ship is on a course returning to Earth from Thedus, using a form of FTL drive that requires the crew to spend most of the journey in "hypersleep" in order to conserve the ship's limited resources (food/water/air).

At the end of the film, Ellen Ripley destroys the Nostromo in an attempt to kill the xenomorph.

Design

Images from the collection of scenes Ron Cobb painted under Dan O'Bannon's direction to be "shopped" around with the original Alien script. Top pic is an illustration of the ship (then named "Leviathan"), the middle image is of the blueprint elevations of the same vessel, and the bottom image details the arrangement of the ship's interior.

The design of the Nostromo is credited to illustrators Ron Cobb and Chris Foss. Ultimately Chris Foss' highly organic visions of the spacecraft were discarded in favor of Cobb's NASA-like utilitarian renderings. Ridley Scott made his own design contributions as well, adding most of the cathedralesque "refinery" portion, which dominates the craft on screen. Much of the ship's architecture, particularly its interiors and the colossal spires of its refinery structure, are inspired by the cavernous yet simultaneously claustrophobic sensibilities of haunted houses and castles from Gothic Horror films such as Nosferatu.

Right (middle image): Cobb's blueprint elevations of a late Nostromo (then named "Leviathan"), notation reads:

Basic Lockheed CM 88B Bison transporter frame modified and fitted with a Yutani T7A NLS Stellar Drive. The original Saturn J3000 engines have been replaced by 2 Rolls Royce N66 Cyclone Thrust Tunnels with bi-polar vectoring for mid line life function. Each power plant developing 7,250,000 tons thrust (14,500,000,000 pounds) giving a high impulse total of 14,460,000 tons. [1]